Washington’s untapped influence in Myanmar

Despite China’s power and proximity, the US has more influence than it recognises in Myanmar, writes Hunter Marston.

On 7 October, President Obama signed an executive order lifting nearly all of the remaining economic sanctions on Myanmar’s government, following a meeting with the country’s leader Aung San Suu Kyi during her September trip to Washington. American businesses are eager to invest in “the last frontier” in Asia, fearing that China has already dominated economic opportunities there.

Despite China’s enduring influence over its neighbour, the United States enjoys several unrecognised – and underutilised – advantages over the Asian giant, flowing from its substantial soft power, an asset China has failed to cultivate.

Myanmar watchers often frame the country’s democratic opening as Naypyitaw’s attempt to balance the influence of Chinese and Western powers. Many credit the political transition to the former junta leaders’ desire to pivot away from Beijing’s long-time dominance by leveraging US support for systemic reforms.

With the Obama administration’s easing of sanctions on the country, some now suggest that the US and China are locked in a competition for influence in Myanmar, which finds itself at an historic crossroads. Were it that simple, Myanmar would have been “lost” to China many years ago, given Beijing’s proximity, power, and history.

However, Myanmar is a country, not a prize, and as events such as Brexit recently illustrated, nationalist impulses nearly always trump more rational, economic motives. Despite the relative absence of US investment in the country, Myanmar’s people still look to the West as a force for good.

Yet, as Monish Tourangbam and Pawan Amin note in a recent New Mandala article, China still enjoys a strategic advantage. Given years of Chinese economic clout and Myanmar’s chronic underdevelopment, this situation likely won’t change for some time. As Myanmar scholar Bertil Lintner said in a recent interview, “Myanmar remains of huge economic and strategic importance for China.”

China is Myanmar’s largest trade partner, with bilateral exchange in goods reaching nearly $10 billion in the first 10 months of 2015-16. Seeking to escape that trade imbalance, Aung San Suu Kyi’s government has courted the United States and most recently made the case that the time was right for lifting sanctions. The Obama administration and US Congress continue to advocate for Myanmar’s democratic progress as they seek to deepen cooperation with the country.

Nice words about enduring friendship and progress in implementing democracy and respect for human rights may have been said during Suu Kyi’s visit to Washington. But realities on the ground will not change. China is there, just across the northeastern border. And the US, despite its “pivot”, is far away.

Myanmar’s massive economic needs ensure that Western investment alone cannot fill the void. However, the United States possesses a few key – and underappreciated – advantages that China should envy: a hugely positive reputation (compared to that of China); values of democracy, rule of law, and respect for human rights, on which that positive perception rests; and unique and desirable business brands (these include globally recognised products such as Apple’s iPhone and Pepsi soda), which pose opportunities for inroads in Myanmar’s rapidly growing market. When asked, Myanmar people voice a clear preference for democracy, English language, Western culture, and business standards.

Despite its massive economic leverage in the country, China suffers from a reputational trust deficit. Chinese projects such as the Myitsone Dam have left a negative perception of the country’s investment strategy, with its lack of consideration for labor standards, the environment, and human rights.

Where Chinese businesses have rushed to secure investment deals, often displacing local people and wreaking havoc on the environment, American corporations have committed hefty sums of capital to invest in education, job training, health and water infrastructure, earning goodwill from the Myanmar people.

However, US companies have been extremely reticent to commit to the country in the near term, wary of political risk and fearful of getting involved with “cronies” sanctioned by the US Treasury Department. The Obama administration hopes the recent move to ease restrictions will boost investment.

The United States, viewed as a responsible business partner and staunch supporter of Myanmar’s democracy, wields enormous influence over the country’s leaders and people.

While China will continue to hold an outsize presence in the country with its massive infrastructure investment, the United States has an untapped reservoir of goodwill. Myanmar businesses and consumers are eager for expanded US trade and investment in the country. The recent lifting of remaining sanctions will pave the way for expanded economic cooperation.

At the same time, Washington should continue to press Myanmar’s leaders on democracy and human rights. Aung San Suu Kyi values US opinion and has a strong relationship with both President Obama, his likely successor Hillary Clinton, and the American Congress.

When President Obama first visited the country in 2012 (he again visited in 2014), he received a massive show of support, passing by tens of thousands of cheering Myanmar people in the streets of Yangon. As Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton was also instrumental in US-Myanmar policy, traveling to the country in 2011 and spearheading Washington’s rapprochement with Naypyitaw as part of the US “pivot” to Asia.

In the long run, the US can explore further military-to-military engagement with Myanmar’s military under its International Military Education and Training (IMET) program. The US trained Myanmar military officers in the United States in the 1980s. Resuming US-Myanmar military engagement is a surefire way to build links with the latter’s most powerful institution.

As the US and China compete for influence in Myanmar, it is important to recall that the “great game” may not have a clear winner (after all, Myanmar is a country, not a prize). But there are a variety of instruments available for Washington to take advantage of the massive support it enjoys in the country.

Hunter Marston is an independent Myanmar analyst based in Washington, DC. You can follow him on Twitter at @hmarston4.

6 Responses

Look at how our minster of information lectured Thailand a few months ago: “Thailand risks ‘substandard’ democracy!” Within a split-second, I predicted that he must be trained by the US. Sadly, my prediction was 100% accurate. He attended several human rights and journalism training sessions offered by NGOs funded by the US Embassy. So not having a gunshot fired, the US took over our Ministry of Information.

Apart from the media, the real thrust of American influence comes from these NGOs, most of which are modern-day Trojan horses, lecturing ‘Western values’ and eating up critical human resources developing countries rely on. You might believe that Western values are ‘superior’ since people adopt them freely. Nothing can be further from the truth. Does McDonald have superior food since people eat it most? Remind me of the days when our neighborhood church used to give out ice creams and let everyone play video games so that children would go there—an opportunity to convert. The video games and ice cream instilled a sense of inferiority. “See, our church has it, your monastery doesn’t. Which one is better?” Now, every assistance comes in with such missionary ‘conversion’ projects. Want technical training? Listen our human rights lectures! Want vaccine? Need IMF assistance? Open your market! And remember, do as we say, not as we do! (Read Kicking Away the Ladder by Ha-Joon Chang).

The West loves to divide up people. Soon after the infiltration process as outlined above, some fully-converted West-worshippers attack ‘traditional’ people as ‘backward’ and push to ‘Westernize’ (they call it modernize or globalize) the country. Conflicts and protests—often branded as cry for freedom and democracy—come in, as happened most recently in US-nurtured Arab Spring. Sedition is successful. The soul of the country is destroyed, and the nation becomes, as Robert Taylor says, “just another country seduced by the power and glitz of globalization and inane mass culture.”

Back in the good-old days, Burmese King Bagyidaw suffered melancholy and died because he couldn’t stand the sight of British Residency forced upon him after the loss of first Anglo-Burmese War. The Residency didn’t talk much. Today, judging from how the US Embassy regularly interferes and lectures Myanmar even on bread-and-butter issues, Bagyidaw’s ghost must be laughing.

‘…values of democracy, rule of law, and respect for human rights, on which that positive perception rests…’
Every empire has its day, and then comes the time for them to depart and hand the baton on to another. Even the British understood this reality, and they were mostly graceful about it. The Americans however, appear to want to grip fast to their former role and defy destiny, even though there time is now up. What happens in this situation is that all the other nations of the world eventually gang up against the miscreant and prize the baton from their dead fingers. The way things are going the ‘Stars and Stripes’ could end up as a greater symbol of infamy than the German swastika. Myanmar should have nothing to do with them.

I agree with Neptunian and stop harassing DASSK just because she is no longer a super star in the West. She is a Myanmar patriot and her duty is to protect Myanmar from Bangladeshi Muslim aggression, inside and outside the nation. All Myanmar ‘allies’ care about is oil and lumber, except India and Israel who have remained steadfast allies politically. The West should keep it’s filthy nose out of Myanmar affairs.

As Yanks are wont, “Well, I’ll be damned!. All those all you can eat iPAD’s (made of just about skate labour in Foxconn Concentration camps of course, oh, in China) and Pepsi soda!

The Ed Barneys’ ever enduring “Promotin of Democracy” con line must have a sell by date. Good job total control of “media” and all those self important “academics” in all fancy universities and self righteous “activists” make sure that the same con line can be used again and again and again in Guatemala where there was not even a single communist before the brothers Dulles destroyed it and a bout a hundred countries since.

For sure English speaker worshipping, White people kowtowing (just being Asian) Hollywood worshipping Burmese may be at low point to con before the game is up, especially with their current immmense hatred for so-called previous military leaders and the Chinese, but the spanned in the works could still be that “country like no other”.

Facts on the ground is Yanks or West or anyone better harry up . As people are now on 6 month notice on their pin up cultivated girl Aung San Sun Kyi whose shine is rapidly going off. Unless irreversible interbationally obligated contracts are singed during that time, that fake- what was it ” water infrastructure” – balloney may not magic for long.

Essentially Burmese relation with China has been based never in the history on mutual respect but on apprehension and exploitativeness precluding a mutually beneficial and warm relation with Aung San Suu Kyi seemingly paradoxically acting as Than Shwe’s emissary.

What Burma needs is equal and even footed genuinely beneficial relation not nay with China but with all especially with neighbours.